I remember the Sunday afternoon represented in this picture very well. We had come home from church and lunch out, and I promised Andrew, who had finished his weekend homework and had no scheduled games or other obligations, that I would set him up in front of the fire with a book. I don’t think it was his idea, and I’m pretty sure I described it using unfairly delectable phrases. But I was trying to create a certain delight in him: a cherishing of a free afternoon or evening to just sit in peace and read. Since he hadn’t yet reached the recalcitrant middle school years, he was enthusiastic about the idea. We asked his dad to drag the old wing chair in front of the dining room fireplace — the only working downstairs fireplace at the time. From the looks of it, Dad also built the fire. Andrew chose whatever book he was reading that had him entranced, and I got a blanket for him to snuggle up in. Everyone tiptoed past the room all afternoon, and he stayed there for hours. No music, no TV, no talk. Just the crackling fire, a cozy chair, a blanket and a good book. Bliss, right?

But not for many modern-day children, and why is that? I suspect it’s because they haven’t grown up ever experiencing such moments, because anymore, such moments have to be created almost artificially. Is the TV on more than you suspect it should be? Pause a moment and think about what that constant background noise is doing to your childrens’ sensibilities. Today, at 24 and 20, my children have many friends who cannot go to sleep without the television on — because they have no experience with silence, with quiet. Then we have to ask ourselves: were people built to perform their best with a steady diet of background noise? Consider for a moment today’s epidemic levels of child and adult medication. Is it possible that the constant drone or blare of percussive noise causes depression in people? Think about a walk through the woods, with only the rustle of leaves or the distant sounds of rushing water? Does that not sound soothing, therapeutic, almost like a day at the spa? Is it any accident that “spa music” so often includes water sounds, bird sounds, ocean wave sounds — and does not, if it isn’t too elementary to point it out — include the sounds of television commercials or nighttime police dramas?

Even music can sometimes become intrusive — an unnecessary distraction from the rare calming moment of reflection and sharing with others. After a day or two of keeping with everyones’ demands — for any of us, but especially for a young child, who surely already feels a small cog in the machinery of the world — just to sit quietly with a book or one’s thoughts, and carve out the time to become inwardly centered — in short, to become friends with one’s self, and not to fear an afternoon spent only with a crackling fire and a book for companionship — is surely an antidote to the social desperation we see in so many teenagers and even, sadly, their parents. If being alone is tolerable, then we needn’t be so frightened by the possibility of friends who turn out to be fickle. If being alone is acceptable, then when the rest of the world is caving to moral expediency, we stand a chance of being the one person who won’t: we might even have a shot at being noble, even heroic.

But for a parent to create such moments in a child’s life is a militant act in our world. It’s decidedly counter-culture, whether one swings left, right, or center. Certainly in American life, horrific noise is on all sides of the political landscape. Just look at both the Democratic and the Republican presidential conventions: the noise is so thick and deep that obviously, real thinking endangers the goals. Noise drums up fears, hatred and anger. Noise raises money! Quiet encourages thought, tempers reactions, and quells individuals who are one step from joining the mob. Yet from casual restaurants to Hollywood special-effects extravaganzas, from 100,000-seat football stadia (which I do love!) and sold-out concert arenas, we are saturated in noise. I cannot state it more plainly: if you want your children to cherish quiet, you will have to go to some extraordinary lengths.

But the message in doing so could not be more clear: your mind and spirit are worth cultivating. I trust you to be alone with your thoughts and be nurtured by them. You are worth investing time in, all by yourself. You don’t have to have a group around to be of value. You don’t have to be living according to the agenda of histrionics set by the world. I read recently about people building dream homes with a dozen television screens installed in a media wall, all of them running on different cable channels concurrently, like the monitors in a television newsroom. Why do they feel the need to absorb 12 news stations simultaneously? “I might miss something,” one such homeowner said. “I don’t want to miss anything.”

But he is missing something. He is missing the priceless treasure of his own spirit. I wonder how it might all have been different for that impoverished soul if his mother or father had just once wrapped him in a blanket, put him in a cozy chair, lit a fire in the fireplace, handed him an entrancing book, and tiptoed around him on a Sunday afternoon.

Thank you! I’m hoping that others will have that same sense of familiarity: it will encourage them as they raise their own “renaissance children.” The world needs more astute children and young people — which is why I’m writing this book.

I love quiet — my childhood was loud and frightening. When my daughters (now 24 and 26) were growing up, I needed quiet myself and I also thought they would benefit from having quiet space to read and think. Here were my practices for our whole family:

1. If they (or I) wanted to watch TV, little time was allowed for it and I encouraged them be intentional about it — turn on the show you want to see, then turn the TV off afterward. No constantly blaring TV with no one really watching and no TV at mealtimes.

2. No more than one source of sound at a time. If someone was watching TV, the rest of us were not allowed to, say, start playing piano in the same room. If someone was playing piano, listening to the radio, having a conversation, no other sources of sound should be introduced in the same room or within earshot during that time.

3. No TV in bedrooms, ever (a practice we all still follow).

4. I disabled sounds on baby and toddler toys. When sounds were integral and useful to the toy’s function, I’d leave it. But I didn’t buy toys featuring unnecessary beeps and squawks and when they got those as gifts, I’d disable the sounds. So they never learned to associate crazy loud sounds with “winning”.

5. They saw me reading or just sitting silently a lot of the time, and so they got into those habits too.

6. I never bought any video games, and they never asked for any. (I may have gotten lucky there! I would’ve said no if they had asked.)